Drink For The Thirst To Come Part 23

"Robideaux?" he said.

Nothing.

With walking, walking got easier. The warm wet town carried blood heat. A million men, a million women gathered, b.u.mped, shoved, jiggling, to have each other in screaming carnal ways. One good long juicy hump, Whooo-eee, that was JUST what it was, coming. Good times in a good place.

Might be this Robideaux was not a young man, but he was, for sure-enough, a man and Jeremy strutted him on the Vieux Carre. "Thank you, Robideaux," he sang out, jostled by a pa.s.sing wave of flesh and sweet eyes flashing him and his old lady guitar. Flesh everywhere. The stinky places between a million legs breathed in with a swish, exhaled musk and magic. Each b.u.mped another, going, coming, rushing here or, sweated for the night, waited to rub a stranger there. Each rub gave a little hint, a glistening sniff of what might be had, might be-later, sometime later-but tonight for sure.

Good time, this. And this wasn't even it, not yet, not at all. Yet this was good. For a Traveler, this town, this time? Bring it on. Jeremy could about use up this Robideaux in one grand night, easy to find heart and legs and eyes in some other man or woman in the swollen silence Robideaux knew would come by magic after Lenten midnight swept the town, amen.

Crushing bodies carried him through narrow ways. The breath from every peeling building smelled...

...Jeremy pulled heavy through Preach's nose...

...of old mold and plaster, bugs and iron, like cellar damp and niter-frost, of sweat and a seven-night-stained bed. A reek of old times, when the world was hungry, sharp and b.l.o.o.d.y, filled him at every breath.

The smell, too, was a smothering wash of spice, not half a bad smell.

Sky was scarce on the narrow streets, a slice of late day blue, steeping in sundown red. Iron balconies trailing shadows set off the color. Above them, pretty twilight hid the big black, deep forever tarted up for fun. Music slapped him ever which-way as evening settled over the Quarter. Tunes thumped ahead, behind, or came down through louvered shutters from tall bright rooms above the street. The noise was tin, tingle, and rumble, distant booms and screeching toots and brashes. The guitar hummed at his back, now. She wanted out. Wouldn't be hard, finding a place to let her wood and steel go loose.

He went into a place. Set down, had bourbon whiskey. A few minutes and someone asked, Can you play that thing, or's it just deadwood there?

"Deadwood, sir?" he said, not understanding. "Deadwood, this?" he said, petted the wrapped guitar. "Why, she a breathing thing."

Yah, but can you play it?

"Mostly she play me," he said. "Heyaw, yaw, yaw..." Then he played, his eyes gone knives. Eight bars made him a star. A couple numbers, he was famous. When he left an hour later he was a legend, a drug they'd never tingle to again, not there.

An easy town and easy times, and Jeremy was feeling-Robideaux was feeling-heavy 'round the groin. Oh, yes.

Dark had deepened while he'd played. Shooting crackers let a stink of spark and powder now. Beads filled the air, spinning. Rings and coconut flashed. A throb tingled him from Robideaux's feet to behind his neck. It wanted. He wanted. Bodies pressed him, each a life, a story, a world to go to and be in. He yearned to reach and be them.

But he was tongue hungry. The bouquet of roiling oil and flaming spice breathed on him from a dozen places, this street, that street. Behind wide doors and tall windows, wood fan blades shoved the boiled perfume of crawdad and hot boudin to him. Red bean juice and andouille filled the air. Hmmm-mmm... Time to feed this Robideaux corpse. Jeremy turned on a whim, rode the notion through a door, like that. Daddy Boil's. Old Mother Guitar mumbled at his back; must have liked the joint.

Daddy Boil's was nearly full, not quite. n.o.body paid note as he slipped Robideaux into an a.s.s-warmed chair beside the stage next to the john door by the far wall. A flow of bodies flashed in and out, looking, yelling, catching one another, leaving someone, then banging back to the street and the party roaring out, beyond. Jeremy settled him back among stomachs, groins, and legs. For a while n.o.body cared that Robideaux waited to feed.

At the bar, backs and elbows. At the far end, a round and shiny church lady poured a.s.s over both sides of her stool. An old wh.o.r.e, waiting. She never turned but her eyes glowed white in the mirror, other side of the bar. She stared into her own darkness and sipped tea, listening.

A good place to start, Daddy Boil's, yessir.

By and by came a pretty girl covered in sweat and p.i.s.sed at him-the particular him of Robideaux. "You play that thing now, Preach'?" she shouted over the beating juke.

"Yuh-huh," he said. He was known. Robideaux had tricked him here. He smiled the man's pretty best. "I surely do." Jeremy's Robideaux eyes drank the girl, so obvious.

"Since when you take that up?" she yelled. "Give up the preaching now, old man?"

"Since always is when," he yelled back. He unwrapped the guitar, loving the touch even with Robideaux's hands. "Since the Trojan War and long before." The strings hummed when the cover-cloth brushed them, sliding off. In light, the living blaze of the wood pulsed in the heart of its grain. "She proud, huh?" Jeremy wiped the strings and looked up and down the woman. "An' I ain't showing you no old man, li'l girl."

A run of firecrackers prattled in the street. Robideaux's left hand p.r.i.c.ked the frets; thick black fingers flicked the steel strings. The guitar matched the night's song, just a chuckle-enough to show this pretty piece of woman that "old man" Robideaux was the for-sure goods. "See you, there?" he said. He didn't even tingle with that pitiful effort, music to a firework night. "Nothing to that. And I don't give up no preachin' neither, now, you see?" His right hand axed out five church chords, loud. Heads turned. "Still sermonizing. Taking my text from Mardi nuit." He resolved the church he'd conjured in the air, let it dissolve to cathouse b.u.t.termilk. G.o.d-chords pumping a fine wet f.u.c.k.

Whoo-hoo... the crowd laughed. Some crossed themselves with a shiver. The tea-drinking lady turned her blind face to him, c.o.c.ked her head.

Jeremy smiled Robideaux's big eyes at the sweet sweated girl by his table.

"So then," she shifted her hip and looked at Robideaux's hands, "suppose you'll be wanting to make arrangements? Pay your drinks with playing, now? An' if that, well then that's a thing you gotta take up with Daddy Boil and Daddy Boil ain't here, so there."

Jeremy had already fished down his pocket and grabbed the envelope of money. "I pay," he fanned the bills across the table, "American folding. I play when I want and not for nothing, neither, girl."

She ran to bring a mess of food, trailing smiles and the fine perfume of sweat and laig. When she lay down his plates, she hovered to admire Robideaux's way with food and those big hands working. She's thinking, Jeremy knew. So, too, was Robideaux. That much he knew.

Daddy Boil came, trailing a hail of calls and the spit of shootin' cracker. The street gave him up with a grudge and Daddy filled the door. Then he stopped, sniffing like with a smell of something old, long-gone but real familiar. Then Daddy squeezed through and ate the oldness right out the room, filled it with his own self, then some. "Where dat man? Where is dat one?" Daddy shouted. "Where is dat Jeremy?" he called, head rising from his neck like a fat black cobra.

Onstage, Jeremy was snugged down and riffing, stroking the neck of the guitar. All for himself, but the room was in love.

Daddy's voice took the room, Jeremy with it-who tingled at his name, his by f.u.c.k real name of Jeremy, who no one in this room, in this town, should know. No one anywhere should see him, Jeremy, wearing Robideaux like a skin-suit, no one but oh f.u.c.k, another Traveler.

Then Jeremy looked and saw old Father G.o.dd.a.m.n, himself. Jeremy, for-real pickled. "Aw, f.u.c.k," he said aloud. Daddy boomed so no one heard. Bodies made a wake around him, saying "Where yat?" or "What the h.e.l.l, n.i.g.g.e.r!" Then, quickly, "G.o.dd.a.m.n sorry, Daddy Boil," or, "s.h.i.t, Daddy, din't know 'twas you," voices sorry to be alive in the place Daddy Boil wanted to be.

But shoving toward the stage, Daddy was in no mood for mad. Inch-thick fingers wagged gold. Beads and poppits snaked around his arms and neck. He smiled white and gold; purple, yellow, and green rainbows, baubles and sweat sprayed as he threw to the crowd.

Jeremy squatted inside Robideaux, watching the unlikely approach of another Traveler.

The big head rumbled deep laughter, "Ho, ho, HO," and, "Ha, ha, HAAA." It called, "Heya, heya, HEYA, you got yousef kotched, for sure you did, Jeremy f.u.c.k-face. Let yousef be traveled, you yousef, trying to travel him..." Daddy pointed at the Robideaux Jeremy wore. "Preach' there traveling you all the way to Fat Tuesday and some Gumbo Gris-Gris for to salt your tail like some garden slug. Ho, the Big Dark be hungry for you, f.u.c.ked-faced Jeremy."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n," Jeremy said by way of greeting.

"Ay-yez," Daddy yelled to the crowd, "you hear dis? The Queen of the Iris's tossed out her t'ree carat diamon' ring wit' her poils, Sattiday past, an' n.o.body ain' find it yet since. Riotin' in the streets ovah deah, y'heah?"

Jeremy's music was forgotten in the suck of bodies chasing three-carat riches through the door.

Daddy Boil turned to Jeremy. "Ain't no ring been toss'd, but it one good rumor, huh?" Close and personal, Father G.o.dd.a.m.n's Daddy-voice sounded like a millwheel. His head shook with the joy of it.

The laugh became a steel smile.

"Been a time, G.o.dd.a.m.n," Jeremy said.

"Has indeed," Daddy nodded. "A decade? No, I lie. Two."

"Ireland," Jeremy said.

"The Lebanon," Daddy winked, "but who's arguing? Lemme hear some of that good old stuff, Master f.u.c.k-face. Gimme that old minstrel lay from the foist Crusade, what say?"

Jeremy obliged the old, old creature inside Daddy Boil. The guitar wailed for Father G.o.dd.a.m.n and the few slouchers, too drunk-and the church lady, too blind-to go hunt diamond rumors in the streets. They heard the music of the Elder World, a ghost's prayer, cried in a tongue common two thousand years gone, words called out in market cities along the eastern trades, or spoken in places where desert waves broke against sandstone gates, or whispered across campfires when frigid night breathed wolf from dark forests.

The drunks turned to squint. The Church lady sipped. Jeremy finished.

"Maire Laveau," Daddy Boil called. His voice loosed dust from the ceiling tin. "Maire Laveau," he said when the pretty lady came running, "you forgive this po' dumb preachah man his bill of fare for the night, y'heah?"

"Paid," Jeremy said.

"True it is, Daddy," Maire Laveau said.

"Huh," Daddy said. "Well that I owe, you providing free entertain' an' all." The Daddy smile slipped from behind old Father G.o.dd.a.m.n's knife-edge grin. "Come with me Jeremy, and we'll have a drink. The old stuff. Upstair."

Through the kitchen, where lean, tired men lolled after the crowd's quick departure, cigarettes dangling long ashes. When Daddy steered Jeremy through their sweat and smoke, they twitched, being busy, but the big man paid no heed. Then, up a spice-soaked stair, round a dark corner and up another few treads to a room.

The room was high and wide. To Jeremy, it was cramped. Room enough for Father G.o.dd.a.m.n and his furniture. Robideaux and the guitar squeezed in behind.

Daddy lit a candle and poured two pulls of thick green liquor. "Play s'more of that sweet old stuff," he said over the noise from the street. "Let me to more'a that Jeremy noise." Daddy laughed again.

The bitter essence of old time rose from the liquor; the scent of wormwood filled Jeremy's heart.

"Oh, Daddy Boil..." Robideaux started. Jeremy shut him out of it. "What're you f.u.c.king doing here, G.o.dd.a.m.n?" he said.

"What am I doing?" G.o.dd.a.m.n slipped from behind the Daddy Boil face. He spilled a touch of the Red to Jeremy's drink. It spun clear in the gla.s.s. "Same's you, Vatachela. Traveling."

Jeremy bristled. Long years since he'd heard his old name. He sipped. The bitter touch of worm' made him tingle, numb and alive together. "High-profile traveling. You settled like a citizen, living big."

A touch of Daddy edged his voice. "Comforts and joys, Vatachela." He poured another slop of absinthe and laced it Red. "Been the Daddy Boil here, near ten years, J-boid. Since the Lebanon, I think." The fat man sat back. Watered silk cushions lapped him like a loving tongue. "Comfort. Joy. The way you taste time, feel its flow." He sipped. "You understand? No you don't," he added without a pause.

Tight-stretched, Jeremy stood in the center of the room. He held his guitar by her neck.

"An' han't it been a time?" Daddy said. "Tell you, this the fines' city in this half-round woild." G.o.dd.a.m.n sipped. "An' you? You criss-crossin' de oith? On the b.u.m. Hoppin' into one, eatin' up another? And now..." Daddy Boil laughed again. "All that b.u.mming and hopping and you ain't loined nuddn'. And now you gets dragged here by dat... dat Robideaux." He leaned forward and spat the name ahead of his laugh. "Robideaux taking you to conjure the Jeremy out of him; he going to shove you inter the big Dark for the long Forever." He sat back. "Thought you'd like to know."

Jeremy tingled. "You warning me, G.o.dd.a.m.n? You love me same's I have respeck' for you." He sucked green, poured another. "You just another eater of flesh."

"Mebbe absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, Jayboid," G.o.dd.a.m.n said. Another ho ho ho filled the room. "You got respeck' for no one and no thing," he said, the cushions sagged around him. "Trouble Jeremy, trouble is. Nothing make you love. You travel, you go nowhere. Don't live the life you have, don't use the lives you take." Then there was Daddy Boil again. "And you gots yourself a pickle now, n.i.g.g.e.r; cotched holt a mans as wants to live, a mans as believes in his heart all the magics of the woild he given."

Fireworks crackled. A wind carried a whiff of flesh, old food and fresh night. Jeremy felt the stars above burn through smoke and scent. He heard the old Earth grinding on its axis. Daddy smiled through sweat and rolling skin, his eyes creased all way back to his hair. "And that living man's gonna blow you the f.u.c.k outta him and t'row you de h.e.l.l off this oith." Daddy's eyes narrowed, laughing. "I'd feel sorry for you Jeremy, I purely would, if you was woith it. But you..." He looked up and down Jeremy.

Father G.o.dd.a.m.n's heart tickled like a bug every which way over him.

"...you jess a small thing," G.o.dd.a.m.n said, "been aroun' a couple dozen thousand year and soon be gone, 'fore anyone knows you was even heah, none carin' that you left." The smile drained to nothing. "Won't remember you, myself, Vatachela."

The absinthe was body-warm in his mouth. "We see," Jeremy said, smiling Robideaux's lips. He backed toward the door. "We see."

Daddy Boil stood, filled the room. Outside, the night blew steam. "Will miss your music, though."

In a second, Jeremy was in the dusty hall, heading for the dark. Daddy's voice followed. "Hey Robideaux, you hear?"

Jeremy, on the steps down, gripping the guitar by her neck...

"You get shut of that old Traveler man inside you, Robideaux, and come back to Daddy Boil's, y'heah?" The voice shook the walls.

Jeremy, in the moldy stairwell, then running through the bright hot kitchen...

"Come back alone, I get you fed, drunk and laid. Ho, ho, ho, you hear? All on me."

G.o.dd.a.m.n's voice shook the building. The cooks looked up. A dozen eyes covered him. An ash hissed into the roux.

Jeremy, out the back and up the alley...

"Come back alone, an' I'll sure take care of you, Robideaux. You know Daddy Boil pays for nuffin' he doan gotsta, but I figure: this, he gotsta." Father G.o.dd.a.m.n's laugh followed over Mardi Gras.

The old town wrapped Jeremy. The sidewalk bucked like the tow in the chops of a wake. Some places, rain and centuries had worn all away leaving the old, old dirt of the Earth.

Daddy's voice gone, Robideaux commenced shouting. "Help me! Help me!" He called to the masked world reveling around them. The world laughed.

Jeremy dashed into a wall. "Take that!" he whispered to Robideaux. Blood ran down his face.

"Help me, Lord!" the man called and tried to run them to a line of dancing men.

"Show us your t.i.ts!" Jeremy called to the men.

They laughed and did!

For a thin moment Jeremy felt the urge to ditch this body, leap into a dancing man. No, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. He did not, would not, no.

They ran.

Now, as before, Robideaux hauled left when Jeremy heaved right; Robideaux urged full ahead, Jeremy spun 'round, turned back.

Half a short block from the blinking blue emergency light, Jean Louis's Charity Hospital, he s.n.a.t.c.hed them shy of the glow that washed down from the cross above the old wing.

Then Jeremy, off into the dark streets beyond where...

Robideaux ran them to a mounted cop leaning in his saddle like The Thinker.

"Devil got me!" Robideaux shouted. "Ho, ho, ho!" Jeremy added to Robideaux's scream, cry-eyes flashing.

"Ho, ho to you, too, sir," the cop said. The horse farted. "Wanna keep movin'?" cop said. "Sir," he added and waved Robideaux on.

Jeremy heard f.u.c.ked up n.i.g.g.e.r, beat unspoken in the cop's heart.

"Thank you, sir, thank you muchly," Jeremy said, Robideaux gibbering. "I be one f.u.c.ked up n.i.g.g.e.r, I sure do, sir. Surprised you don't just whomp me upside my haid."

Jeremy stumbled them down the way, chuckling, sobbing, running, walking. The dark way widened to gaping holes between old buildings. The buildings soon dissolved leaving flat earth and ruins, broken brick and gla.s.s, either side of the broken street. Here and there a building. Mostly, though, empty stretched to the distance, the distance vanished into silent night. Robideaux took breath in this place. He sobbed. Jeremy let the man have his cry, fed on it.

"I runs to the Rock..." Robideaux blubbered.

"Rock doesn't hide you." Jeremy's song bounced across night silence in the dead city. Jeremy grabbed Robideaux, shoved the man's face, their face, to the black gla.s.s front of a boarded bar. Baby Doll, the sign said. Robideaux's face pressed Baby Doll's window.

"Now you're gone stop. We gone stop."

In a minute Robideaux's breath settled. Ahead a squat silhouette loomed against a few milky stars. Two bell towers, either side of the building. The roof between them sagged.

"That a church, Robideaux?" Jeremy said. Robideaux's heart tingled. Sanctuary, the tingle said. "You taking me to church, old man?"

Robideaux, he said nothing.